Mickadeit: Family feuds over iconic El Toro mart

The El Toro Carcineria on West First Street in Santa Ana brings in about $1.7 million a month. The family that built the business has been removed from day-to-day operations. FRANK MICKADEIT, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

The El Toro Carniceria on West First Street is an iconic enterprise in Santa Ana's Mexican American community. It takes up almost half a city block and has grown over 33 years to include a grocery and butcher shop, a Mexican deli, liquor store and a check-cashing operation.

It was built by the Bonilla family – a mom and five brothers – and they started from virtually nothing. On a given month, now, gross sales are around $1.7 million. It appears to make a decent profit. Net ordinary income averaged about $120,000 for six months in 2012.

But the Bonillas, while they remain the legal owners, are getting none of it these days, and one of the brothers, Joe Bonilla, says he's received nothing in six years. In fact, the whole operation could be sold out from under the family.

This is a tale of family greed, betrayal, threats of violence, resolution and, amazingly, reunification to fight a new common enemy they say is pillaging the business. That new enemy is a judge's appointed receiver, whose lawyer says the brothers are "brigands, tax cheats and ruffians."

In 1977, motherJustina and her eldest son, Luis, started El Toro. Within a few years, brothers Sal, John and Joe came aboard. Later, Alfredo would join.

I've written about Joe and his wife, Estela, in other contexts – most memorably in 2004 when Estela caught their then-15-year-old son, Joe Jr., with a condom in his sock drawer and called me to complain. I took the kid's side. We had a lot of laughs about my Condom Boy columns, but this current family affair is not funny.

Joe Sr. says he left Santa Ana College in the early 1980s in order to work at the El Toro market and was promised 25 percent of the business. He became operations manager and the other brothers found their niches in the ever-expanding empire. "We were working 16 hours a day, seven days a week," Joe says.

The brothers had quarrels, but they were all making money, and Joe thought things were OK until one day in 2006 he found evidence that John – who handled the financial end of El Toro – had secretly opened another store in Fresno and was diverting El Toro profits to it. He'd also moved key El Toro employees to the Fresno operation and taken out a $500,000 loan by borrowing against the El Toro market.

(Attorney Tom Prenovost, who represents all the brothers other than Joe, declined to comment while the case is pending and advised his clients to do the same.)

When Joe confronted John, John took Joe off the checking accounts and essentially shut him out of any business decisions. The other brothers sided with John. "I felt betrayed," Joe says. He sued his brothers in 2007.

When they found out he sued, he says, they locked him out of the store, cut off his $5,500-a-week salary and told him that if he showed up, Sal "would kick my (behind)."

"(John) took my medical insurance, which I needed for my two disabled kids," Joe said.

A settlement was worked out in 2008. But the brothers allegedly reneged and Joe resumed litigation. The case finally came to trial before Superior Court Judge Gregory Lewis in late 2010.

After eight days of testimony and argument, Lewis ruled for Joe, who was represented then by Ray Brown. Lewis ordered the brothers to give Joe 20 percent of El Toro and $3.3 million he'd been denied.

After five years, "I felt I was vindicated," Joe recalled. "It was over. I could get my life back. We were moving all the time because we had no money coming in. We'd lived in nine places. I was going to get to go back into the store and help run it."

Not sofast. Judge Lewis had noted the brothers' record-keeping had been "aberrant and outside industry norms." There were "phantom employees" who used to hide money that went into the brothers' pockets. Lewis found that 19 percent of revenue was going unreported.

All that cash. Major tax issues. The brothers couldn't be trusted. The judge agreed with Brown to let an outside receiver take control, transition Joe back into the business, see that he was paid his arrearages and straighten out the books. "Just a few months," Joe says he was assured.

Tomorrow: Brothers reunite.

Mickadeit writes Mon.-Fri. Contact him at 714-796-4994 or fmickadeit@ocregister.com

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